With the widespread availability of intranets and the Internet in the home and workplace, network traffic has become increasingly congested, leading to increasing in client delays in obtaining desired network resources.
In an effort to avoid such delays, a common technique is to host a network site, e.g., a web site or other network resource, on multiple network hosts in different geographic areas. Thus, a network site may be hosted in different countries and localities within the countries. An incoming client networking connection is then manually or automatically redirected to a host geographically closest to the client.
In a manual environment, on contacting one host, the host returns to the client a network resource, such as a web page, providing alternative hosts for the client. For example, assuming a client receives a web page, the page may contain hyperlinks to the available network hosts for the contacted site.
In an automatic redirection environment, when the network site's network name, e.g., a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), is resolved by a Domain Name Server (DNS), rather than having the DNS return an established (or static) mapping of a network address for the network site's name, instead the DNS returns the network address of whichever network host is geographically closest to the client. It is assumed that host addressing conforms to naming devices on a network, with DNS supplying an address, such as a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) address, for the named device. The theory is that geographically distant network hosts will have longer network delays, while close network hosts will have short delays. Unfortunately, such an arrangement does not always result in the client being connected to the network host having the most efficient connection to the client, e.g., the network host providing the fastest data response times to the client.